Gizmodo: We’re Living in a 3D-Printed Gun Dystopian Nightmare!

The technological wizards at Gizmodo are just now awakening to the fact that OMG!…YOU REALLY CAN’T STOP THE SIGNAL!

We don’t know where the recently convicted [Tendai] Muswere got the plans to 3D-print a gun of his own, but we do know that he was able to do it. That’s the next scary phase of this threatening technological movement.

There’s not an organization that one can necessarily connect to the discovery of a 3D-printed gun. The plans are out in the open, on the internet. People with means can use them to print firearms and maybe more will come up with obscure reasons like a dystopian film project to explain why they’re doing it.

Yup, already done and did. Barrels as well, but the cost of that tooling is still in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, requiring inert gas blankets in the work area. And it will likely take over a decade for prices to drop to home-shop levels, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by advancement in the past. A machine shop ‘ghost shift’ in a manufacturing production shop is the likeliest source for those, like the way it is now in China.

I believe the next evolution in 3-D printed gun technology will be to use pre-fabricated and sold-over-the-counter barrels, since they aren’t currently controlled.

Not long back, a European commented in TTAG that in Europe, the pressure-bearing components of a firearm were the ones that were heaviest regulated. And that kinda makes sense. So, stock up on complete barrels, barrel blanks, and the specialized tooling to make them, like deep drills and chamber reamers, and rifling cutters…

You can make tool & cutter grinders. One well known DIY design isn the “Quorn” grinder design.

But, for those who want to chamber a barrel slowly, carefully, and who possess the patience, you could make a D-reamer from drill rod, harden it up, and then use a boring bar to remove most of the material for a chamber and finish with the D-reamer. You won’t need anything more than a lathe and some measuring tools to make a D-reamer. Oh, and fire and a quenching media.

This really isn’t rocket surgery, folks.

Go back on archive.com and start looking for old machining books – from literally 100 years ago. Before 3D printers, before CNC, before NC, before hydraulic tracer machines. Start reading.

We made enough rifles to fight WWI without any of these gee-whiz manufacturing technologies. They’re still pretty solid rifles to this day.

There’s no need to stock up on specialized tools. Using ECM machining with a cheap dc power supply, a conductor, and some basic aquarium supplies, anyone can drill, ream, rifle, and chamber barrels made from mild or alloy steels from the comfort of their apartment bathtub. There is no controlling ‘pressure bearing components’ when they are cheap and easy to make for yourself.

It is almost funny how the technophiles freak out over anything associated with 3D printing. They seem oblivious to the fact that these bench-top models available to the public do not do anything that can’t be done by a skilled craftsman with shop tools and a dremel. (Yes, the industrial versions can provide precision and uniformity that a human cannot match, but those aren’t what they are referring to).

Writers like this remind me of children overreacting to boogeyman stories.

Felix I look forward to the day printed firearms compete with the cost of second hand hipoints and the cost for entry in this field is comparable to that of a used Xbox. Thanks for noting this aspect it’s usually missed entirely.

Most journalists and poseurs who are writing ‘content’ for these various internet-based press outlets and multi-blogger sites have useless degrees in liberal arts, humanities, or nothing at all. Most have no practical skills of any sort – they couldn’t hunt for their own food, they can’t blacksmith, machine, hell, change the oil in their car or know how to change a tire off a rim. They’re utter idiots – but they’re idiot savants with a keyboard and their ability to string words together as they’ve been indoctrinated to do so in college.

To these deficients, a machinist doesn’t exist. They literally have no idea how a hand file works, they have no clue how to make anything. To them, guns are like food: they come from the local store. How they contents of the store are made? That’s magic.

But along comes a 3D printer. All that is required is putting in the plastic feedstock, download a program, and hit the green button. That’s so easy, even an idiot like these ‘journalists’ can do it. Now the projection begins…. if they can do it, and they know that they’re unstable, often heavily medicated mental slag heaps, then 3D printers are a huge threat to society.

When I’ve told people that I could make guns with nothing but a hand file, they usually accuse me of being full of bullshit. Recently, I showed some chirpy little girl that I was, in fact, being brutally honest. A dozen hand files of varying cuts and shapes, and I made a gun part for her while she stood there and watched. It took all of 20 minutes, and another 10 minutes to demonstrate hardening and tempering. When I was done, she was alarmed – “How many people know how to do this?”

“I really have no idea. Take all the gunsmiths. Then most all machinists. And blacksmiths. And watch makers, clock makers, etc. Hmmm. Lemme think – most engineers – well, let me amend that. Most engineers older than your generation, because so many of you twerps can’t be bothered to live in the real world. Hobby machinists and gunsmiths. I dunno – half a million to a million people in the US?”

The reaction was one of gobsmacked bewilderment. I had to drive the point home: “Look at the news out of Australia: they’re collecting more and more homemade guns all the time over there. Except that many of them are full-auto. I guess they reckon ‘if you’re gonna go, then go big.’ ”

These twerps today suffer from a huge lack of knowledge of the practical arts – thanks to the feminization of our educational system(s). I got into an online debate with another junior-league wanker this past week over the issue in the UK – where the cops are trying to convince people to give up knives with a point on them. Once again, some junior wanker thought that this was a good thing, and it would save lives. I pointed out that a pedestal grinder or belt grinder, 10 minutes and some water for cooling, and anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature could put a point on a knife.

Then came the question that makes me wonder if there will be time to save western civilization. Said junior league wanker asked “What’s a pedestal grinder?”

What DG said. I’ll bet if he had just said a “bench grinder” the snowflake would’ve asked if it was to sit on. The stupidity of the sheeple never ceases to amaze me.
How is it even possible to go through life without knowing what a file or a screwdriver is? My mind boggles. Do they even know that water is wet? Perhaps the next thing to outlaw will be water bottles as the precious little snowflakes forget water is to be swallowed and not inhaled. God knows society can’t afford to loose geniuses like that.

Yep, this was me, up until about 28 (I am 35 now). Had no idea about machine tools, hobby machining, home metal casting, etc…was really shocked when I learned what people can make on their own. Was not anti-gun, just a total city-slicker type in that sense (still am in many ways, but working to change this). One great thing that has brought many of these practical skills and arts back to prominence has been the Internet and the Maker movement.

‘…useless degrees in…’ – journalism. About as useless of a degree as you can get next to maybe ‘gender studies’.

‘…anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature…’ – I’d like to think that back in the days I refer to as ‘when I was young and stupid’ that my generation was just as dumb as the latest, but I sometimes wonder if somehow the human race has gotten dumber in the last 30 years.

This morning (really) a neighbor down the street asked my wife on facebook if I could help him with a wall TV mount. He said the holes didn’t line up. I went over and marked where the hole needed to be and he asked why. I told him I was going to drill it. He asked almost incredulously “in STEEL?” I said let’s go. Walked to my garage and put a drill in the press and popped the hole in the mount. Deburred it and handed it to him.

He really looked like I had performed some magic trick This was no kid. He’s probably 35.

It’s starting to worry me about people.

PS – I’ve been prepping brass all weekend so he saw about 20 loading trays of shiny LC 7.62 ready to load in my garage. I think that made him really nervous.

@Gov. William J Le Petomane — Of course they are dumber, especially when you consider they are learning “common core” in school now, where you don’t need a correct answer as long as you can show you tried to get it right! Also, because of the internet, fake news, and reality TV, we see more of these idiots than we used to.

Ratler, having lived in a small midwestern college town for 20 years I have learned the difference between intelligent and educated. They certainly are undereducated. We’ll find out in 20 years if they’re unintelligent.

The reason they freak out over 3-D printing of firearms is that these progressives have never produced anything of value in their lives.
The idea that you could go out and purchase supplies and use skills to home manufacture a gun (or anything else) is foreign to them.

Fun fact– Very rough estimates put the total number of guns in America at 400,000,000. In contrast, the number of cars owned in the US is approximately 275,000,000. The number of fatalities per year, including suicides, are roughly equal. In other words, cars kill more people per unit.

Maybe Gizmodo should be more worried about the dystopian automobile apocalypse versus the stupid number of guns already out there not resulting in a tsunami of death.

I bang on about these numbers all the time – these people just don’t get it. Some whiny, ignorant writer at some pop-tech site is worried about a tiny little number of novelty guns being made by ??? when there are already more actual firearms extant in this country than there are people to wield them. (I know the article was about a guy in GB, but people here get the vapors over 3D printed guns too.)

They just can’t seem to get their heads out of the mode of “more guns=more death”. If that were true, all Americans would already be dead. As it stands, however, the guns used in crime are an infinitesimal fraction of the total available stock. One could halve the number of guns in the U.S. and ban the sale, importation and manufacture of all new guns and we would still have enough to support the current crime rate for the next dozen centuries.

Absolutely correct. Even with fully mature technology capable of producing a real fire arm that can fire in semi-auto and not blow up in your hand, 3D printing won’t even move the needle> The only thing it will do is remove government oversight and in other news, murder is still illegal.

And yet after over a *century* of continuous safety advances, cars still kill in roughly equal numbers to that of guns.

And, strangely, very little organized outrage.

Huh, It’s almost like people consider that the good that motorized transport on a public road provides for a society makes the loss of life yearly to be worth it. Personally, I find freedom to be worth that risk as well…

it’s a willful mental blindspot. Every time I point this fact out, the comeback is how necessary cars are to modern society. When you point out how transportation isn’t an enumerated constitutional right, they look at you like you’re speaking a foreign language. It gets even more fun when you argue how cars are built so that they are essentially able to break federal law in terms of speed limits. Nobody needs a car that goes 100mph+ and violates federal law, but finding a car that can’t is a serious exercise.

Just like you don’t need a thirty round magazine or semiauto capability… You know, unless there’s a riot in Ferguson or Saint Louis. Or New York. Or Los Angeles. Or a lawless situation like Katrina. Unlike the car, I can name a number of very real world example where my firearms “excesses” would come into legitimate need. Why did you need to go 90mph again?

And bonus round, if they insist on that one off situation where they need to rush a deathly ill/pregnant patient to the hospital, that’s when you innocently advise them that they can wait for police assistance… And watch them justify how law enforcement might not get there on time. Sort of like the reason people own firearms?

Dirt floor machine shops in the middle east turn out functional firearms. Quality is crap compared to S&W, Ruger, etc., but they go bang at least as reliably as the poorly maintained guns used by American criminals.

Every time one of these 3D print articles comes up, a whole bunch of people pop up sneering at them, comparing them to machine shops, saying 3D printers bring no new capabilities.

Yes, they do have new capabilities. They require no skill. Anybody can plunk down a few hundred dollars, buy some generic gunk, download some plans, and print all sorts of stuff. They don’t need to buy expensive machine tools and learn how to use them, or buy different kinds of material, or fiddle around with settings and stuff. Just plug and play.

And that’s why the sneerers come out in droves, because they spent time learning a skill and here comes some upstart punk who knows nothing.

3D printers will being illegal guns to the masses far more widely and far more cheaply than even the cheapest machine shop. Yeah they are junk today. But they won’t always be. Your machine shops are going to be as practical to the vast unwashed masses as Model Ts some day.

Yes, someday. But in the present day, being that I’m pretty ignorant about them, could someone explain to me how the materials these printers can produce compare to heat treated and/or forged steel? Seems like someday is still quite a leap.

How do they compare? Pretty poorly.
But remember this: you see many here tell us that their carry handgun is only there to give them time to get to their rifle.
Now, apply this to the criminal world: the printed gun is there to give them time to get to a metal gun.
Now, how do they compare?

Not having a dangerously cheap gun has never stopped thieves and robbers from stealing guns in the past.

Seems to me the short-medum term concern would be that you could make a decent quality Glock frame and buy after market barrel, slide, etc. and assemble your own fully functional firearm without a background check. But this doesn’t really concern me since I’d rather have them print a Glock frame than break into my house looking for guns to steal.

The problem is that everyone is getting wrapped around the axle about “criminals” printing their own weapons, when it is truly RARE for criminals to do this. It is far cheaper, quicker, and easier to just buy what they want off the streets. For the price of a printer, computer, printer materials, and then ordering the other parts, and the time consumed doing it all, they can buy 3 or 4 weapons right NOW, not a week or month from now; AND most of these thug can’t even figure out how to wear pants, much less figure out all the intricacies of 3D printing. The main people that really have an interest in this 3D printing is lawful gun owners, patriots, and survivalists, and that is the reason that they emphasize it so much, because WE (lawful gun owners, patriots, and survivalists) are the ones that “they” fear most.

Well a) we all know (or at least should know) that there are a lot of 10mm loads that are probably running at .45acp pressures, and b) how many rounds did they actually subject this ‘sintered metal’ to? 10,000? 50,000? 3?

1. The chirpy advocates of 3D printing are waaaaay out ahead of where the technology they champion actually is. 3D printing in materials other than plastic/wax is still a very, very expensive proposition, both in the price of the equipment and the price of the materials. That powdered metal ain’t cheap.

2. 3D printing is slow. So slow. Oh, so slow. When you watch how “fast” a 3D printer, of any technology, isn’t, and you watch modern CNC machines using HSM toolpaths, tooling, etc – the modern “subtractive” CNC technology is blazingly fast compared to any 3D printer. Most people have really unfounded ideas that 3D printing is going to suddenly displace “subtractive machining” from manufacturing. Well, that ain’t happening until 3D printing becomes literally an order of magnitude faster.

3. Metallic 3D printing can result in metal parts that can be polished, finished and can withstand real stresses. Sintered 3D printed parts are on par with MIM parts in strength. 3D lost wax processing just helps create more complicated castings – they’re still castings, and we know from Ruger that cast parts work plenty well enough on guns.

In all of this, I have to laugh at the panty-wetting hysteria of these clowns who think that 3D printed guns are some huge public panic.

The leftists have been running around moaning about technology since the time of the industrial revolution! The more diversified the technology becomes, the less centralized control is possible, the anti-freedom hates it.

It’s a front for banning all unlicensed gunsmithing; to eventually make it illegal to handle firearms outside a range/armorer, and to suppress the technical knowledge necessary to keep firearms culture alive.

While interesting, it’s CNC machining where real quality in firearm manufacturing is headed. I can buy used CNC machine from manufacturing companies that are upgrading their equipment at reasonable cost. Then buy 80% lowers and pump out pistols and AR’s in mass.

3D printing will develop to making arms out of carbon fiber or metal. But until that time, why not just build breech loading centerfire pistol or rifle from a modified muzzle loader?

Most production gun companies are, and have been doing CNC machining of their parts for a couple decades now.

Used CNC machines are low enough in price that many home machinists can afford them. You can get late 1990’s CNC mills and lathes for $10K to $20K in decent shape and make parts. You’ll spend at least $5K in tooling and fixtures, and another $5K for CAD/CAM software to run these, but for a budget of $30K, you can crank out guns in quantity.

Or you could start with a budget of $10K, but a lathe and a Bridgeport, drop about $3K into hand tools, and make them on manual machines.

This stuff ain’t rocket surgery, y’know. You just have to learn that gunsmithing is a special branch of machining, and there is more to the pursuit than meets the eye.

I dont get what all the fuss is about 3D printed guns. Hell if criminals start using 3D printed guns then most of us will have the upper hand as far as equipment quality/reliability is concerned. Anyone can go to a hardware store and make a rudimentary shotgun for cheap. If passing by metal detectors is a concern then just use those full-body x ray machines. And if that’s not possible then pat the fucker down. What’s the problem?

The problem is, take any hundred ‘liberals’ today, add up their collective I.Q.s, and you might get to three digits… maybe. That is the problem today. The criminals are in charge. And no matter how stupid they might be (the answer is: VERY!) they still do a large amount of damage.
Someday, when enough wake up to the threat, we can do something about it. But if they don’t wake up soon, they’ll likely find themselves murdered in their sleep.

Your comments mirror a lot of the rational comments on Gizmodo, some even from non-gun people. Given the cost of a 3D printer for the best 3D material types, a better option for criminal is to make a Zip gun from home depot parts or buy a stolen gun and that can apply in the US or UK. Gizmodo’s hysteria spreading attempt did not work.

FWW, the Andersons I have ran seem to be as good quality as any other 80% brand out there. The price on the the stripped lowers are fantastic, however, ya still hafta do the paperwork cuz they’re “firearms”.

“People with means”, that is; anybody with a drill and the ability to go to a hardware store and buy a couple pieces of water pipe, can make a shotgun without any printing, or plastic, or computers, or anything other than a drill bit and a pair of pliers.
Maybe this author ought to think about that for a while.

Don’t want an “American terrorist” to print himself up an AR to use against (corrupt) government.

You need a tax stamp for that, boy! You can’t exercise your 2nd Amendment while under a PO and you dare not use it against the government. Were you planning to shoot up the federal court building or something? Or just some politicians? That’s 8 years for you!

They love that “You can’t stop the signal” argument right up until it’s about something they don’t like. They whine about “right and wrong” right up until they’re found to be “wrong” then they whine about that.

Everyone seems to be barking up the plastic gun tree. Some places call 3-d printing stereolithography. Pretty much name your alloy and it can be printed. Look a little further into metal printing and you’ll find functional, test-fired rocket engines, aircraft parts, Formula 1 parts, surgical implant parts and on and on. These machines are very expensive now, but like everything else they’ll be finding their way to the surplus machine market.

I was able to 3d print a 10-22 receiver with PLA and used it to cast an aluminum receiver. It did need some work. If another is made it will be kept it closer to factory measurements so not as much milling will be needed . Thought it would shrink more than it did. Was temped to make one from bronze so it would require minimal lube.
Natural PLA, 5% infill and fiber reinforced investment with vacuum debubbling and casting.
I’m thinking the infill and shell layers could be reduced even further to lower ash even further.
So metal printers while nice are not really needed to make most metal parts that are on weapons.
You can make a lot of the parts with a lathe and mill and for more complex parts Lost PLA casting seems to work fine.

“Problems arise around tracing 3D-printed guns and although possession of such weapons is illegal in the US and the UK, enforcing the law is difficult because it is not necessarily known who is making them.”

Above from the actual article, News to me that 3d Printed guns are “Illegal” in the U.S.?
Gun pictured in TTAG article above is not the same type Printed by criminal Subject in the UK.

They seek to regulate and control guns at certain points. Stores are one point, gun shows another. Manufacturing opens up more points.
They are convinced the way to a safe society is through the elimination of weapons. Maybe they have never faced a large opponent or a group bent on harming them.